


Scrapyard Rotgut

by palimpsestus



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Furiosa bonds with her crew, Furiosa casually heresies, Furiosa gets drunk, Gen, I may have also written this while drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-05
Updated: 2015-07-05
Packaged: 2018-04-07 17:25:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,518
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4271688
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/palimpsestus/pseuds/palimpsestus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Furiosa drinks a little too much and gets a little too honest with her new War Rig crew. </p><p>Prompt: Furiosa & Ace (& War Rig team) - Furiosa gets fed something mind altering by trading partners</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Bargaining

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ArwenLune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune/gifts), [bonehandledknife (ladywinter)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladywinter/gifts).



> For http://madmaxkink.dreamwidth.org/450.html?thread=1118146#cmt1118146 – _There is probably a form of alcohol or drugs at the Citadel, but Furiosa never lets her guard down enough to use anything. Then one time during a trade run she (accidentally?) ingests something mind altering and when they're all around the campfire she becomes startlingly loose-limbed and effuse._
> 
>  
> 
> _There was no intent and there's not the kind of danger to break off and leave, but Ace and the rest of her team distract her away from the traders and keep her in a protective circle and definitely don’t feel a little warmed by the way she’s smiling at them so easily_
> 
>  
> 
> _Just.. slightly intoxicated Furiosa and her protective and endeared war rig team, pls?_
> 
>  
> 
> And then this follow up
> 
>  
> 
> _Right?! And Ace makes sure none of them would ever consider giving her shit for it later (or tell others what happened) because he's got more than enough shit on each and every one of them. They should feel honoured, he says - and they do._
> 
>  
> 
> _Maybe she also blasphemes a little bit. Tells them she hopes they don't go to Valhalla for a good long time yet. And on the one hand that's ALL WRONG and on the other hand, super flattering?_
> 
>  
> 
> And WHAM I was sold. This takes place in the ‘The Things Men Do’ universe, but all the relevant info will appear in the story anyway.

The white rotgut the Yard Master’s boys brew stinks of sweet guzzoline and liquorice. The Ace only had to walk past one of the Yard’s anaemic boys holding a tin cup to be unpleasantly reminded of the last time he had had the misfortune to oversample the wares. Drunken men promise more labour than they should, and so the rotgut always flowed freely in the Yard. Drunken men think they can strip ten cars in a day, and so the next morning are bound to their promise with headaches and retching stomachs, and they manage three if they wake early.

Yes, rotgut flowed freely here.

All the same, the Ace didn’t think his Imperator was going to be overselling their labour tonight. Mayhaps that’s even why the great Immortan chose the young woman.

According to Citadel legend, when the great Immortan traded the Yard Master a wife for a new fuel pod, the wife had stolen a car and made her way back to the Citadel to claim a place among the War Boys. He wasn’t sure he believed that story. He’d heard from Noxious that Furiosa had driven back to the Citadel on a bike that was more scrap than engine for one thing. But then Ace could hardly claim that half of the stories the pups told about him were true. Ace didn’t like to believe anything he didn’t see with his own eyes, and he’d seen Furiosa take a Rock Rider’s head off with an explosive round at fifty lengths. He’d seen Furiosa break a War Boy’s nose for questioning her command.  And he’d seen Furiosa in the Rig on the long road to the Scrap Yard, with her mouth in a thin line and her metal fist clenched on the window of the cab. He’d seen her snap at her War Boys and post double guards around their Rig while the Yard Master’s boys worked on her. And he’d seen the tight line of her shoulders every time the Yard Master threw her a backhanded compliment.

So from the things he’d seen with his own eyes, he’d guess she had some kind of history with this place.

For the sake of his War Boys, he also guessed that meant she wasn’t likely to drink too much of the rotgut, and not likely to contractually oblige them to slave under the hot sun tomorrow.

“How’s it going?” Furiosa asked as she approached him. She’d been working up a sweat overseeing the Rig’s repairs and her newly earned black paint was dripping. The line at her temple had trickled down to her jaw in a bead of black blood. It made his fingers itch to tidy the markings.

“Well enough,” he said with a nod. From his vantage point in the shade of a scrap tower, he had a good view of the Rig and the workers crawling over her. Between him and the Imperator they’d positioned their crew in watchful positions around the Rig, paired worker-guard so that they’d draw less attention to themselves.

Furiosa climbed to his crow’s nest and gratefully accepted the Aqua Cola he held out. She wiped a hand over her forehead, smearing grease back. “Maybe another day, you think?”

Ace made a so-so noise, pretending to think. He’d known Furiosa for long enough, worked with her for plenty, but she’d earned her paint on the same night their Rig had been robbed of a driver, his crew had been bereft of a leader, and their Rig lost an engine. Imperator Furiosa was still feeling her way as Imperator instead of the crew’s second.

Being an Imperator took some different from others. Some got harder, worse on their Boys, kicking Pups’ out their path. Some got smug, and forgot they all started out Wretched.

Furiosa had started feral, gone so high, then been more Wretched than any, and now an Imperator.

But she’d also always been good to the Pups, his crew and their War Boys.

“I think two,” Ace said, honestly. When he looked up at her expression he caught a bit of triumph in her eyes.

She thought two as well, then. She’d been testing him too. She grinned at the mutual realisation and patted his shoulder. “I need to go speak to the weeping cock,” she said, jerking her thumb in the direction of the yard’s office. “Tell him that alternator is not going to cut it.”

He chuckled at the honorific, “You might try asking for a new injector while you’re at it. Engine Two’s one is going to give up the ghost any time.”

Furiosa rolled her eyes and scowled in the direction of the office. “Great,” she drawled. “How much do you think I’m going to need to drink to get him to agree to _that_?”

Ace snorted and watched her climb back down to the dust. Something in the way she moved, long limbed and gentle-like, he had to admit was very pleasing to him. Being an Imperator suited her far better than being a second, he thought. Made her looser, calmer. “You be careful,” he said as she headed for the office. She raised her metal hand to show she heard, and waved idly to show she didn’t care. The Ace went back to watching his Rig.

By the time night rolled around he’d circled the crew around the Rig, except Morsov and Nillin who were with Furiosa in the office. Omidin was perched atop the Rig’s cab, normally Furiosa’s spot, and Ace grumbled at him to get down. The War Boy did so quickly, scurrying from the black painted roof like he expected a beating for the transgression, which wasn’t Ace’s style, nor Furiosa’s for that matter. Ace slapped the Boy over the back of the head for appearance’s sake, and took up his own spot behind the Rig’s hitch. They hadn’t brought the tanker of course, but Ace still felt better standing where it would have been. They’d lit a fire near the Rig to keep warm, and most of the Rig’s crew was huddled around it, except those on guard, and the Ace only felt the need to circle their camp three times before he settled.

As trips to the Scrap Yard went, this one was relatively pain free. So far.

Nights in the Scrap Yard were always the same. The sounds of revelry and drunkenness emanated from the small square at the office, while the guests who didn’t join the Yard Master’s celebrations were left to shiver in the cold. A lesser crew would have started drifting off by now, but not Furiosa’s. When she’d been running as Imperator Noxious’ second, she’d run a tight crew, and so far that hadn’t changed while she wore the black paint.

The Ace heard the cadence of the party change and squared his shoulders, almost holding his breath as he waited for the Imperator to return.

The three shadows stumbling toward them in the dark were watched by the whole crew. The Ace’s heartbeat was hammering hard against his chest. How much work, girl? What did you sell us for?

Morsov almost fell as he tried to sit down and Furiosa caught him with her metal arm, laughing loud and clear like a coyote in the night, her eyes screwed shut. “Morsov, you disaster,” she helped him sit and grabbed the Boy by the nape of the neck, pushing her forehead against the crown of his head. This manoeuver outbalanced her and she sank to her knees beside him, resting her elbow against his thigh, her chuckles subsiding.

“How much?” he asked, his voice cracking a little tighter than he’d intended.

The Boys and Furiosa all looked to him, Furiosa still chuckling to herself, her eyes glinting at him like he was a tall, cool drink of Aqua Cola and she had a thirst for something like that. “Haaaa, yeah . . . you did tell me to be careful,” she said, wagging a finger at him. “Thought I might get to drinking, haaaaa.”

Some of the Boys had begun to smile. Morsov’s head was nodding arrhythmically while Nillin had curled up at Nemo’s feet and was snoring.

“Thought crossed my mind,” Ace agreed.

Furiosa held her flesh hand up with two fingers extended. She began to laugh again, cackling, and elbowed Morsov who jerked and grunted something in agreement. “We,” Furiosa announced, “are getting . . . two . . . new engines.”

“What?”

“Thaaa’s right!” Furiosa’s triumph nearly toppled her backwards and Rev was quick to lean down and stop her going arse over tits. “Rev!” she cried like she hadn’t seen him in years, and she circled both arms around his lumpy neck, drawing him closer for a hug. “You are thaa _best_ fucking outrider I have ever seen, has anyone tol’ you thaaa?”

Rev patted Furiosa’s shoulder and stared wildly at Ace. “I . . . guess not?” he ventured.

“You are!” She leaned back, holding him at arm’s length and giving him a little shake. “Like you drive . . .” she trailed off and stared up at the stars, another burst of laughter escaping her. “You drive like an angel would drive!”

This drew laughs from some, while Omidin piped up “What’s an angel?”

“Dead thing,” Ace grunted.

“Noooo,” Furiosa shushed him with a wave of her claw and repositioned herself to look Omidin in the eye across the sparking embers of the fire. “Nooo, angels are . . . they’re like . . . like Prize Breeders!” And she clicked her fingers. “They’ve got things we don’t . . . and they . . . live in the high places . . . not dead,” and she scoffed at Ace.

“Dead things,” Ace said again, but could see Omidin was not near so convinced by him.

Omidin shifted a little closer to his Immortan. “How did you do it?”

“Hmmm . . . do what?” She blinked a few times.

“Get two engines!” Omidin exclaimed.

“What are we trading?” Ace added darkly.

“Ha!” She clapped her hand against her thigh. She pointed her metal claw at Ace and then shuffled towards him, hauling herself up onto the stool beside him, leaning her warm, soft weight against his side. She looped her arm over his shoulders. “We . . . are trading . . . nothin’.”

“What?”

She laughed again, so infectious some of the Boys did too. “Nothing! He’s giving us it for free. Bastard thought he could outdrink me. Think he’d have learned from last time but no . . .”

Ace began to laugh with her. “For free? You got him to wager two new engines against, what?”

“More of that rotgut than I’ve ever drank.” She hiccupped, her whole body jerking. “Mmm’ really thirsty.”

The Ace curled an arm around her waist and nodded to one of the Boys to get her some Aqua Cola.  He liked the feel of her in the crook of his elbow, liked how it held his shoulder at an angle the growths could no longer fully accommodate. Liked the twinge of pain it gave. “You mad bitch,” he said approvingly.

“Hmmm.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. “Well you Boys are mine now . . .”

He squeezed her, a little, a warning.

“No you are,” she was nodding her head against his upper arm, pointing wildly at the lads around the fire. “An’ I wanna get somethin’ straight.” She sat up, only wobbling slightly from side to side. “You all understan’ me . . .” she wobbled forward and backwards, but her gaze sought out each Boy in turn. “I _wan’_ you _all_ to understan’ me . . .”

“Furiosa,” Ace began, at the same time as Morsov woke up enough to say “We do. Witness,” Before immediately slumping forward again.

“No,” Furiosa said, going perfectly still. “This crew. We don’t . . .” she groaned and sighed and strangled a scream all at once, slapping her hand to her forehead. “I need a crew,” she exclaimed, “A crew that works. Together. Need you all. So no one . . . no one’s going to Valhalla. You understand me?”

“Not yet,” the Ace softened her words, watched the Boys as they looked between one another. Believe what you see with your own eyes, he’d always said. Well they’d all Witnessed it, hadn’t they?

“We work together,” Furiosa relaxed against his shoulder again and yet again his arm snaked its way around her belted waist, his hand resting between her metal arm and the leather of its straps. “You're my crew,” she added. And she hiccupped again. “Need a good crew.”

“We’re your crew,” Rev said, and a few others echoed it, each one quick and furtive, while Furiosa nodded to herself.

“You’re my crew.”

The Ace turned his head so he was speaking to her ear and he murmured low, “Do you want to sleep now?”

“Hmmmm,” she agreed.

“Come on then.” He stood, hauling her up with him, and began taking awkward steps toward the cab. At each War Boy, Furiosa stopped and pushed her forehead against theirs, until the Boys were all standing – with the honourable exceptions of Nillin and Morsov – to receive their honouring. The Ace kept tugging her toward the Rig, trying to glare at the few Boys who queued back up to receive Furiosa’s goodbye more than once. By the time he was helping her into the Rig, he was not ignorant of how his hands got to explore almost all of her as he eased her into the cab.

Furiosa lolled back in the rear seat, her arms up over her heads, and she giggled. “You liiike me,” she teased.

The Ace sat back on his heels, watching her with raised eyebrows. “Boss, you used to be a breeder. You think I wouldn’t like you?”

She laughed sharply and sat up, fluid and easy, all muscle. She was staring him dead in the eye now, her bottom lip captured between neat, ivory teeth. “Want a try? Want to see what the Immortan gets?”

He was about to reach forward and push her back down when she leaned in to kiss him, tasting of rotgut and bile, her lips hard and hungry on his. He felt frozen like a feral in the headlights, unmoving, until she sank back down with another laugh.

“Think that’s enough blasphemy tonight,” he murmured, crawling back down from the Rig’s cab, leaving her laughing.

He made his way back to the Boys, silhouetted in the firelight, each one leaning close to one another and whispering.

“She said I was the best outrider,” Rev was saying, “I’ve never done much chrome or shiny, but she said I was the best.”

“She said we were hers.”

“You know she kept Slit from beating that Pup last bout of the night fevers?”

“Enough,” the Ace snapped. “Come on. We want to be awake bright and early tomorrow to get those engines before the Yard Master changes his mind. You want to be her crew?” He paused, just to judge their eagerness, the slack jaws and wide eyes, “Then you be ready for her.”

And they nodded and whispered their agreements, fierce and proud and ready to serve.

It took all Imperators different in the end.


	2. Loyalty

The sun drilled a fiery shaft into her forehead, with all the buzzing intensity of a lazy blue-fly, droning in her ear.

So she raised her hand to cover it, and clanked her forehead with half a kilo of metal forearm. She swore, inventively and loudly, until her throat protested and her head thumped and she fell silent, clenching her jaw and willing her body to stop bobbing about on unseen waves.

Back when she’d first lost her arm, and limped back to the Citadel bloodless and weak, she’d had a mantra, and her mind recited it now. _What do we have that works?_

Well the metal claw still worked, as evidenced by the reverbing headache that bounced all around inside of her skull. She wiggled her toes experimentally, foot by foot inside of her heavy boots. One leg was propped up much higher than the other, and her back was pressed against leather that had grown hot and sticky with her sweat. Her metal arm was resting on her forehead, her other arm dangling off the bench seat, fingers brushing the sandy floor of the cab.

The cab. The Rig. She was in the Rig. This much was good at least.

Next, she certainly had a stomach that roiled and turned, and a head – although it couldn’t quite be described as ‘good’ in all honesty. Her head was three parts pain and two parts fuzz. Her eyes could tell it was a bright and early morning, even though they were covered with her arm, and her tongue was stuck to the floor of her mouth, cemented there like a rock.

“You okay, Boss?” The Ace asked, sounding like he was speaking from her boots.

“Uhhhnnn,” she groaned.

A meaty hand patted her boots. “You just stay there, Boss, no worries.”

They were in the Scrap Yard. That was less good, but it proved her memory wasn’t shot to hell. If they were in the Scrap Yard and she was this hungover, then there had been bargaining last night.

And if the Ace was letting her sleep . . . either she’d come out on top, or she’d fucked up beyond measure.

And it didn’t feel like she’d fucked up. The head hurt, sure, and her body felt like it had gone three rounds with Rictus Erectus, but there was no sickening lurch of fear in her gut, no more than usual anyway. And if she had drank this much . . . things had either been going very well or unbelievably poorly.

The only way to find out more was going to be to open her eyes and sit up.

“Boss?” The voice was quiet and hesitant, young, Omidin, she remembered. It was coming from the window at her head and she shifted her arm fractionally. The Boy was holding a canteen of Aqua Cola and she nodded. Slowly she levered herself onto her side and Omidin pushed the canteen into her hands. The metal was cooler than she’d expected, beaded with sweat, must have been one of the bottles buried in the shade.

“Thanks,” she managed, and steeled herself against the feeling of her rebelling body. She adjusted to the reorientation by degrees, feeling like the blood was sloshing around inside her skull, near to the boiling point.

Someone had told her, a very long time ago, you should only drink in the desert if you’re near an oasis, because the only way to cope with the morning after in the heat was to submerge yourself beneath the cool. It had been her Initiate Mother who had told her, the night she’d tried the sweet pressed-fruit booze they’d been trading to the Walking People. Katie Concannon had grabbed her by the nape of the neck, bumped foreheads, and said “This stuff’ll rot you if you let it, little Furiosa. But I reckon you’re about ready to try it.” And in the morning, Katie Concannon had led her to the spring and showed her how it felt to submerge her aching head beneath the water, how easily the sins of the evening had faded.

There was no pool here. So far from the Green Place. No pool. No Katie Concannon. Just her. And these Boys. And this Rig.

Slowly, she wetted her lips with the water. And after a few more moments, took a deeper drink. And then another. Until her stomach begged for mercy and she let the bottle rest on the cab’s floor.

Time to face the music, chicky, Concannon would have said.

Climbing out of the Rig was not done quickly or with much grace, but Nemo was waiting beneath the mighty beast to help her, and after waiting a moment for her to turn a few shades less green he started up a report. “Boss, the Yard Master isn’t awake yet and but his boys have shown us the engines we’re getting, the Ace has gone over to take a look at them, make sure we’re not being scabbed.”

“Hmm.” It took effort to walk one foot in front of the other. By the time she reached the bones of the campfire, every Boy she’d passed had raised his hands in a quick but heartfelt V8 salute. With each signal, a little piece of last night fell into place, Morsov and Nillin faithfully matching her drink for drink, the Yard Master lurching from side to side in her vision, and those two V8s being promised.

She sat on one of the low benches and braced her elbows on her knees and her temples in her hands.

“Do you need anything, Boss?” Nemo asked.

“Fat,” she said, “Protein. Anything we’ve got.”

Nemo’s boots walking away were quickly echoed by another pair approaching and she lifted her head enough to see Rev standing in the glare of the sun. She loved him for positioning himself behind its glare so he had to squint and not her. “Hey,” she croaked.

“Boss.” Rev saluted, and then, curiously, bobbed his head quickly too. “Just wanted to know if there was anything you needed?”

Memory smashed into her like a grenade tipped lance, of telling Rev he was the best driver she’d ever met, and she winced. “Uh . . .”

“Let me know if there is,” Rev said, and he couldn’t have stood any taller even if his tumours would have allowed it. Nemo was approaching with a paper wrapped loin that Furiosa could practically smell sizzling on the grill already, and Rev clocked it too, stooping to start work on the fire.

She leaned back a little, scrutinising the Boys around her. Noxious’ Crew, and she’d known some of them for hundreds of days now, had been on raiding parties with them, stopped them from tearing some families apart, let them tear apart others when there was nothing else to be done. They were circling her now like flies on meat, but whenever she met their eyes, they would salute.

“Hey there, Boss,” the Ace’s voice came from behind her and another little knifing of memory presented itself with the definite sensation of kissing him.

Hmm. Well. Concannon had warned her about _that_ too.

Not that the old boy was a bad choice, or at the least he was a decent bad choice. But fuck if she hadn’t said something about breeders and . . . she sighed.

Another memory drifted from the boozy glassware of her mind, from a time before she knew what booze was or breeders or much else for that matter. A memory that started with the feel of Mary Jo Bassa’s hand on her shoulder, and the sight of Concannon nodding, accepting Jo Bassa’s pleas. “Let it be, then,” Concannon had said in a puff of smoke and to the general approval of the other women in the tent. “Girl. I’ll be your Initiate Mother,” she’d said to Furiosa, a gangly ten year old who ran her mouth too often and her fists too quick. “You know what that is?” When Furiosa had shook her head, Concannon took a deep drag of her cigarette. “Means I’ll teach you to live like us. Means I won’t lie to you, unless I can’t avoid it. Means I’ll trust you, and you’ll trust me. Do you want to run with me, girl?”

“Ace,” she said, and the Ace saluted in turn.

“Good work last night. Those engines are chrome.” The Ace watched Nemo’s preparations with the meat with a half shake of his head. “Don’t put it on yet, the coals need to be hot.”

“Yes, sorry,” Nemo snatched the steak back from the grill, laying it fresh on the parchment once more.

“Pup,” Ace announced.

“How quick can we get them installed?” Furiosa asked.

The Ace shrugged his lumpiest shoulder. “The state his crew are in, and with Morsov puking his guts out, Nillin looks like he might be dead and just grunts whenever you kick him . . . I think we’ll be three days with good turnaround.”

Furiosa nodded, and then frowned. “Nillin’s not dead, though, is he?”

Rev pointed towards a lump a good few yards behind them. It was a dust-covered body lying face up. “He just lies there,” Rev said.

“Nillin?” Furiosa called, and quickly one of the Boys was beside Nillin, shaking his shoulder, telling him the Imperator was looking for him.

Nillin sat bolt upright, clay-dust and white paint flaking from his shoulders as he cast wildly around for her.

“Hey!” she called, while some of the Boys laughed, “You okay, Nillin?”

“Yeah!” The Boy centred on her voice, staring at her with black rimmed eyes. “Mm here.”

“Okay . . .” Furiosa could feel the Ace’s silent laughter shaking the bench beside her. She smiled. “At ease, kid. This steak will help when it’s ready.” She glanced to the Ace. “Where’s Morsov? He should eat too.”

“He’d just waste it,” Ace said with a casual practicality. “Nillin might too.”

“Food helps. Protein and fat.” Furiosa pinched the bridge of her nose and braced as the Ace wrapped his arm around her shoulders and laughed.

Katie Concannon used to touch her too, like all the Vuvalini did. She remembered, in another queasy flash of history, Concannon’s cornrows biting into her cheek as she rested her face on her Initiate’s Mother’s head, Concannon sitting between her knees, and holding Furiosa’s hand. It had been the grip of a friend, of an equal, of someone who trusted her and was trusted in return.

It had been many, many thousands of days since Furiosa had felt that.

“Boss?” Nemo had returned the steak to the grill and was watching her, knelt on the clay beside her. The other Boys were watching too, like this was a cue they had lined up while she slept, and even the Ace seemed a little taken aback by this sudden change in rhythm.

“What?”

Nemo licked his lips and looked up at Rev, then back at her. “We . . . wanted to Witness what you did, Boss.”

This didn’t quite filter through her addled mind and she just frowned at them, perplexed, even as they all raised their hands above their heads, fingers laced, and even as the Ace mimicked them, sitting beside her and smirking.

“Witness.”

“Witness.”

“Witness.”

The whispers went round the crew, each of the War Boys staring at her as intensely as they would have watched a chrome-mouthed pup fall beneath the wheels.

Witnessing what she’d done last night, the battle she’d fought with words and steel gut, Witnessing in the only way they knew how, for something that was utterly mysterious to them.

Three days drive away was a Citadel of stone and sand, where a bastard sat on a chrome throne, and he would bend her to his will as surely as the stone bent the sands.

But here, three days away, and with a wheel that could ride the stem of the War Rig, and with these boys hers more than his . . . the bastard felt very, very far away.

And more mortal than else.

Some of these Boys she’d miss when she took the Rig to the Green Place.

But for Concannon, her loyalty would accept even that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apparently I'm very susceptible to suggestion


End file.
